When God Converts a Sinner

Confessional Perspectives on Justification and the Christian Life

Vickers

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274517
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In an age of theological innovation and doctrinal discount, the heritage of evangelical Reformed theology is in increasing danger of betrayal. Old established understandings of the faith once delivered to the saints are under attack, disturbing the peace of the church, tarnishing its witness, and challenging its purity. Against the pressures of newer fashions in thought, Douglas Vickers here returns to the seventeenth-century confessions of faith and illustrates from successive chapters common to three of those confessions the ways in which, and the reasons why, traditional beliefs and doctrinal constructions are to be preserved. Among questions examined with biblically informed insight are the relation between eternity and time and its significance for the gospel of redemption, the meaning and function of saving faith, the accomplishment of redemption by the incarnate Christ, the significance of his heavenly high priestly office, the high doctrine of the Christian believer's union with Christ, and the implications these doctrinal realities hold for the Christian life.In a discussion of contemporary theologies, When God Converts a Sinner examines such innovations as the New Perspective on Paul, Federal Vision theology, Shepherdism, and other attempts to effect a paradigm shift in historically received theology.

1

The Issue Stated

It is clear from a survey of the contemporary scene that we live in an age of theological innovation and doctrinal discount. Old established understandings of “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) are under attack, disturbing the peace of the church, tarnishing its witness, and challenging its purity. Theology, it appears, has lost its earlier and secure moorings. New prophets peddle lesser preoccupations and arguments grounded in shallower presuppositions. Several questions, as a result, engage the reflective Christian mind.

First, given the mystery of the relation between eternity and time, what was involved in the incarnation in this world of the second Person of the Godhead who came as Jesus Christ to be our redeemer? For the gospel declares that “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4–5); that “God . . . loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10); and that “in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). Here we confront the reality that the Son of God came from his timeless eternity “in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18) and entered into the time that he had created, in doing so making himself subject to time in order to accomplish salvation for his people. That salvation had been ordained before the foundation of the world and was now to be brought to effect.

Second, what is to be understood as the theological grounding of the statement of the confessions that “The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe . . . is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts”?1 In what respects are the Persons of the Godhead jointly engaged in the accomplishment and application to individuals of the benefits of redemption, and what relations do the identities of the redeemed bear to the divine decrees and intentions? In the context of redemption, what is to be understood as saving faith and the individual’s capacity and ability to believe?

Third, in what sense is it true and meaningful for the Christian life that “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36)? What is to be said, by way of implication, of the bondage of the human will in the state of sin to which Adam’s dereliction from his covenantal obligations reduced us? And the question follows, is the gospel statement directed to a freedom of the will that the regenerating grace of God conveys to the Christian believer? The seventeenth-century confessions to which we shall return observe that “When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin.”2 But what, it needs to be asked, are the possibilities for Christian living that follow? What is implied in the apostolic injunction, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. 5:1)?

Fourth, why, how, and with what results, do conditions arise in the Christian life in which the cry of the Psalmist becomes all too relevant, “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit” (Ps. 51:11–12)? The confessions again observe that Christian believers “may by their sins fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of his countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.”3 What is to be said, in the light of that possibility, of the promise of our Lord that “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth . . . he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16–17)? What is it, then, in which the believer’s eternal security consists, and what guarantees his access to the eternal inheritance that has been promised him in Christ (Heb. 9:15)?

Fifth, in the light of the answers to these questions, what is to be said of the doctrinal and practical significance of the Christian believer’s adoption into the family of God and, as a result, his or her indissoluble union with Christ? “Adoption,” the Westminster Shorter Catechism declares, “is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God.”4 And the apostle to the Gentiles states that the very meaning of salvation resides in the fact that “ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). It will be seen at more length that the high privileges the Christian believer enjoys turn for their reality and significance on the imputation to him of the righteousness of Christ. For in the once-for-all declarative-forensic statement of God that establishes the sinner’s justification, the believer’s title to heaven and his prospect of eternal inheritance are secured. But if, as the Scriptures abundantly declare, that is so, what is to be said of certain contemporary claims that the imputation of the righteousness of Christ at the point of justification does not suffice? What is to be said by way of response to the claim that certain good works of the Christian contribute to one’s final and forensic justification? In what respect, then, does the reality of the believer’s union with Christ establish the inadmissibility of such contemporary innovations in doctrine that tarnish the testimony and challenge the witness of the church?

The chapters that follow address these questions: the relation between eternity and time in our Lord’s incarnation and his discharge of his High Priestly office; the individual’s saving faith and the freedom of the Christian’s will to do good and live righteously before God; the possibility that the Christian may, for due cause and for a time, lose the sense of the presence of God; and the import of the believer’s union with Christ. Our discussion is motivated by the virtual unanimity on these points of the three confessional documents in which the Reformation theology was given definitive expression in seventeenth-century England. They are the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Savoy Declaration of Faith (1658), and the Second London (Baptist) Confession (1689). Those confessional statements each made declarations regarding the capacity of the human will in the state of sin, the divine decree and accomplishment of redemption, and the progress of sanctification in the Christian life.

Consider, first, the doctrine of the sinner’s justification before God. That doctrine, it is by now well known, has become the center of extensive and disturbing debate within the evangelical and Reformed church. The expansive literature of the so-called New Perspective on Paul, the elaboration of its aims and claims, and that of the Federal Vision theology, is worthy of close inspection but cannot be discussed at length at this time.5 The doctrine of justification, however, which has properly been referred to as “the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling,”6 lies at the center of all that has to be said regarding the revelation of the Christian faith.7 For the question of Job of old remains imperative, “how should man be just with God?” (Job. 9:1). And the apostolic response is spread liberally in, for example, Paul’s letters to the Roman and Galatian churches: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Rom. 3:28), by faith alone and without contribution from individual works; and “that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident; for, The just shall live by faith” (Gal. 3:11).

The Confessions we have cited put the question of justification in the following terms: “God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect; and Christ did, in the fulness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification; nevertheless they are not [personally] justified, until the Holy Spirit doth in due time actually apply Christ unto them.”8 In the light of that statement it will be necessary in the following chapters to examine first, the relation between eternity and time that the confessions envisage, and second, the uniqueness of the High Priestly work of Christ that provides the ground of the believer’s justification.

The second of the questions we shall address, that of the nature and efficacy of saving faith and its place as the instrumental cause of salvation, will require a slightly extended comment on the respects in which the relevant doctrines have been understood in the history of the church. The doctrine of man’s natural state, and the inroads to the church’s theology of the philosophic assumption of the autonomy of man, particularly as that has come down through the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, will be seen to be directly relevant. It is of no little importance to observe that whereas the church’s doctrine of Christology was settled at an early date, issues of anthropology did not receive a similar settlement and have been the source of diverging views in the history of doctrine.

The third of our questions, that of the Christian believer’s freedom from the bondage of sin and the possibility of his obedience to the law of righteousness, is stated in similar terms in the three confessions as follows: “When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, he freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so as that, by reason of his remaining corruption, he doth not perfectly nor only will that which is good, but doth also that which is evil.”9 At that point the paradox of the Christian life emerges. The new believer in Christ is a saint, as is repeatedly declared in the New Testament letters (Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2), and he is also a sinner. Our discussion will therefore bring into prominence the Christian’s status and the character of his new nature and standing in Christ that it implies, and what it is that permits and occasions the “evil” as well as the “good” that the confessional statements have contemplated.

The fourth question, which addresses the possibility of the true believer’s loss of the light of the countenance of God, has been raised by the confessions in the manner already stated and in the following larger context: “God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified; and although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may by their sins fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and [thereby forfeit] the light of his countenance . . .”10 Coming to prominence is a question that will be paramount in the following chapters, namely that a distinction is to be drawn between the declaration of God that those whom he gave to Christ to redeem “can never fall from the state of justification,” and the reality within the Christian life and walk that the light of God’s countenance may for good reason be withdrawn from them.

From the fifth of these questions it follows that if, as the Scriptures abundantly declare, the believer ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Issue Stated
• Chapter 2: The Gospel of Grace
• Chapter 3: Eternity, Temporality, and Redemption
• Chapter 4: The Grace of Faith
• Chapter 5: When God Converts a Sinner
• Chapter 6: The Light of His Countenance
• Chapter 7: Adoption and Union with Christ
• Chapter 8: The Scope of Salvation
• Chapter 9: Conclusion
• Bibliography